


Fool Me Once

by Scriblit



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Another stick-up but this time it's more serious, Hostage Situations, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 23:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20920166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scriblit/pseuds/Scriblit
Summary: When somebody tries the whole 'robbing the store' schtick a second time, David is wise to it, and determined not to be a big pushover and let Patrick down again. Unfortunately, this time, the robber does actually have a gun.OrPatrick realises, far too late, that it may not be the best idea to leave his keen-to-impress fiancé to internalise the idea that the store might be more important than personal safety.





	Fool Me Once

**Author's Note:**

> A few people on here have done fics about consequences to the post-stick-up fallout, which I have enjoyed reading, so I fancied adding one of my own.
> 
> Features a lot of people being imperfect and making poor decisions, and dealing with the blowback from that. Also features an armed hostage situation, a lot of emotional angst and a small amount of moderate physical violence, so TW for those.
> 
> Does feature a lot of jokes, though.

Fool Me Once

Obviously, the guy came in when Patrick was out, again. Same mask, same nervous aggression, fist stuffed into his jacket the same way. Either he’d had a tip-off from the other guy, or it was the same fucking guy, which if the case was just frankly insulting.

Well, not today, fuck-o. Fool him once, etcetera. He wasn’t getting admonished over this again, because if it happened twice, Jesus, it would be so much worse. Patrick’s disappointment in him had been awful. It had made him feel small, and stupid, and childish. Patrick’s quiet anger had been so much worse than getting berated or insulted by any of his asshole exes, because it was _Patrick_. He needed Patrick to know that he wasn’t some clown or some flighty idiot, he was a capable grown ass man, the kind of man it was a smart bet to run a business with, to start a home with. If he fucked this up a second time, who knew how Patrick would react. 

Well, David wasn’t about to find out. Nope. He was on to this game, now. There wasn’t even a small woman’s safety to consider, this time. It was just David, and some stupid ass with his fist in his jacket. He was bigger than this guy. No fiancés were going to get disappointed today.

‘Um, can I help you?’ David gave him a tight smile. He wasn’t afraid. It was just the guy’s fist in his jacket.

‘Gimme the money,’ stammered the guy, indicating to the fist in his jacket, as if it were a gun.

David pulled a sarcastically sorry face. ‘Ohhh, I’m afraid I can’t do that, you really do keep timing this really badly, don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘Also I’m not giving you any cheese, this time.’

The guy just stared at him. 

‘You already hit this place! Don’t you remember? I know you don’t have a gun, I’m not an idiot. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, _huge_ shame on me.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Fool me…’ wait, _was_ that the same guy, though? Wasn’t the other guy younger sounding?

The guy pulled his fist from his jacket.

There was a gun in it.

Oh, shit.

‘Oh, shit.’

‘Oh, shit,’ agreed the guy.

Oh, shit!

David put his hands up, even though it was a little late for that. He had sassed an armed man, who had just… yep, locked the door. Just him and an angry man and a gun, then. 

And this was not good, because he’d been mugged before and you just give them all the expensive shit you have on you and they let you go, but he really didn’t have any expensive shit this time, not except his engagement rings, which, no. No, no, no. 

‘The money,’ demanded the guy.

‘There really isn’t anything,’ David told him, truthfully. ‘The float’s only around $20 this time of day…’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know what to tell you, hardly anyone uses cash any more!’ He opened the register and took out the float. ‘$23.90. Did you want it, or…?’

‘What else have you got?’

‘Uh…’ he _really_ didn’t want to give the guy any of the wine, and he desperately wished he wasn’t wearing four thick gold bands of considerable sentimental and actual financial worth. ‘This sweater! It’s Givenchy, you can probably make a couple of hundred on eBay or the dark web, or whatever it is that criminals use to sell stolen stuff?’ He pulled the sweater off and proffered it to the guy. ‘And… these shoes…?’ He removed one.

‘I don’t want your used shoes! Give me something that’s worth something. Electronics. Gimme your phone.’

David handed it over. The guy stared at it. ‘How fucking old is this phone?’

‘Five and a half years,’ admitted David. ‘The battery life is not good.’

‘Why do you have a five year old iPhone?’

‘I’m poor!’

‘You’re poor.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘But you wear designer shoes and sweaters.’

‘It’s a really long and tragic story with what _was _an upbeat ending until you came along.’

‘Christ’s sake! Just give me your most expensive merch. Good stuff! That I can sell! And those rings!’

David froze, staring at the gun. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘I don’t give a fuck! I have a gun! Jesus! Just do the thing!’

David was still frozen. ‘What about my pants?’

‘Stop offering me your clothes! I just need money. Why are you being so weird?’

‘I don’t know, you’ve got a gun in my face, I think I’m panicking.’

‘You’re trying to confuse me!’

‘No.’

‘You’re up to something…’

‘No!’

‘What, you think this is a joke? You think _I’m_ a joke?? You think I’m not prepared to use this thing?’

‘No, I’m sure you’re very…’

The man shakily pointed the gun, and fired.

David dropped into a protective crouch, and surprised himself by not screaming. He made himself a small, still ball of quiet fear and wondered if he was going to die now, in an undershirt and one shoe, over engagement jewellery and cheese. 

An eternity passed, in what was actually probably about two seconds.

David realised that the only things about his body that hurt were his ears, so chances were, the gunman hadn’t shot him. Yet. 

He dared to look up. The gunman looked how David felt. He was shaking, rubbing his face over his mask.

‘Look what you made me do,’ murmured the man.

David quickly glanced at the damage – the guy had shot a floorboard. 

‘It’s fixable,’ David told him, quickly, ‘or else we’ll keep it, give the place a rustic old west charm.’

‘Look what you made me do…’

‘You haven’t hurt me, and I haven’t seen your face,’ David reminded him. ‘I get the feeling you don’t want to be here any more, and the feeling is very mutual, if you just go, I won’t tell a soul.’ 

The man hesitated.

‘I’m good at keeping secrets, I’ve slept with like five supposedly straight celebrities, and the gossip columns never heard a word.’

The man took a step back. ‘You’re weird.’

‘And poor, and not worth prison.

The man took another couple of steps backwards, towards the door. Yes, that was right, keep going…

‘…from the store, I think…’ It was Twyla’s voice, out in the street.

The gunshot.

‘Get out of here,’ David insisted, urgently, but there were already people streaming out of the café, following Twyla in her sprint towards the store.

‘Are you guys OK in…’ Twyla stopped dead outside the store front, cutting herself off, her hands to her mouth.

And OK, this tableau looked terrible. David on his knees in the store, a few feet away with a man with a face mask and a gun pointed towards him.

‘Gun!’ That was Jocelyn. ‘Somebody call the police!’

‘No!’ The gunman was really panicking, now. ‘No, you’ll do no such thing!’

‘Jocelyn, be careful,’ called Twyla, ‘he’s holding them hostage.’

David’s heart sank. Why did Twyla have to go and say “hostage”?’

‘Yep,’ cried the gunman, nervously. He hurried towards David and physically hauled him up by the elbow. ‘Yep, I have a hostage! You have to do what I say; I’ve got a hostage!’

This could not get any worse.

Actually, there were a few ways that this could get worse.

He could get shot. His Mom could show up, or his Dad. His sister could appear and start giving him Hostage Tips. He could end up on the news, looking like a big scared idiot in an undershirt. Or…

‘What’s going on?’ The voice was concerned, behind the throng now gathered at the window. David closed his eyes against the inevitable.

‘Oh Patrick, honey,’ fretted Jocelyn, ‘I’m so sorry…’

‘What’s going… _Jesus Christ, David!_’

David opened his eyes again, miserably. There he was, staring at him from the other side of the glass, his face a picture of horror, fear and fury.

He felt the gunman tighten his grip on his arm.

‘Hi,’ mouthed David through the glass, unhappily.

‘Let him go,’ shouted Patrick through the glass. ‘Take me, let him go.’

He took a step towards the door. The gunman nudged the barrel of the handgun into David’s neck. Ow.

‘Not another step,’ the gunman warned him.

Patrick stopped. Fuck, the look on his face, fuck. David wanted to just die.

Figuratively. He did not literally want to die right now, thank you, even though the immediate opportunity was currently poking him in the neck.

‘Who’s this guy?’ Hissed the gunman. 

‘That’s my fiancé,’ David told him, ‘and I hope you’re happy, because I am in the deepest shit, now.’

The gunman was not, in fact, happy about David’s situation. David was still probably less happy about it, but it wasn’t exactly a competition.

Patrick kept buzzing around the window, shouting questions, like ‘did he hurt you?’ and ‘why did you make him take off his sweater?’

The police arrived, and were ordered by the gunman to stay way back.

This wasn’t looking good. David honestly didn’t know how he was going to get out of this one. At least his family hadn’t shown up yet, none of them would have to bear witness to this.

After a while, Patrick just sat down on the curb outside the store and cried.

This was horrible. David found the voice to say so.

‘Yes,’ replied the gunman, quietly, after a moment. ‘I didn’t mean… I didn’t want any of this.’ He slumped. He was still pointing the gun at David, but at least David could confidently say that his heart really didn’t seem to be in it so much. ‘I just needed money.’ He paused, and snorted a joyless laugh. ‘Should have taken the $23 and your rings while I had the chance.’

‘Yeah, you were never getting my engagement rings, they weren’t part of the negotiation.’

David lifted his face to take a proper look at what he could make out of the man behind the mask. His eyes looked… haunted. He recognised that look.

‘Heroin?’

‘Crack,’ said the man, unhappily. ‘Eight years.’

‘Shit. That gets expensive.’

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

David indicated to himself. ‘Regular cocaine, and various pills. Three years on, seven years off and counting. But, I could afford it, at the time. Also the rehab.’

‘Lost everything,’ mumbled the man. ‘Job, house, wife… kids…’

‘And now you’re prepared to go to prison for kidnap and murder?’

‘I mean…’ the man cast a desperate look at the window. ‘I’m going to prison now anyway, aren’t I?’

David thought about his cocaine years, about the sleazy assholes who helped him get hooked, about how much money they’d pumped him for, and about how that money had always just been there. He thought about what it must be like to lose one’s livelihood, one’s family, one’s partner.

He also still thought quite a lot about the gun pointed at him and how it was probably a good idea to keep the person holding it on side.

‘OK,’ he breathed, still thinking. ‘OK, so… so we’re gonna do something about this.’

‘Do what?’

‘We’re gonna do something a little bit Alexis.’

‘_What?_’

‘I’m sorry, I’m babbling, I’m still super nervous because you have a gun in my face, OK?’

It had been around half an hour since Patrick had returned to the store, and seen his fiancé frightened and partially undressed in the window, with a masked man clutching him by the arm and pressing a gun – a fucking _gun_ \- to his neck. Patrick felt sick. He didn’t know what to do – he _hated_ not knowing what to do! He’d tried calling the rest of the Roses, but Moira and Alexis were away at another Soap Convention and neither Johnny nor Stevie were picking up – they were probably both still elbow deep with that drainage problem at the motel. He felt alone, and helpless, and terrified and weirdly angry, at this _asshole_, how _dare_ he?? In their store! His fiancé! Nobody should ever, _ever_ get to touch David that way, or threaten him like that!

He was angry with himself, for not being able to help David, or step in to protect him.

He was, briefly, shamefully, angry with David. Why hadn’t he been more careful? It was probably some drug addict who needed quick cash, why hadn’t he just given the man what he wanted and let him…

Oh.

Oh, shit.

And that’s when he had just sat down and wept, in front of everybody.

That at least had stopped, now. Now, he was red eyed and trembling with shock and fear and rage, and was talking to the police, in case maybe one of them might have an idea as to how to get that son of a bitch away from David as soon as possible.

He heard the store’s doorbell jingling gently, but for a moment it didn’t register with him what that meant. But then there were screams again, and he realised. He pushed his way back towards the front of the store.

‘Stay back!’ The gunman was walking forwards, with David in a one-armed headlock. With his free arm, he waved the gun around at the crowd, frantically. ‘We’re leaving!’

‘No! You’re not taking him!’

‘Patrick,’ choked out David from his uncomfortable position, ‘it’s OK.’

‘No it’s not!’ Patrick stepped towards the gunman a little. The man pointed his gun at him. ‘Please. He’s everything. Please don’t.’

‘Patrick.’

‘Let him go,’ continued Patrick in as even a tone as he could. ‘I’ll be your hostage instead, I’ll come quietly, what difference does it make to you?’

‘I need a car,’ barked the man. 

Jocelyn threw some keys. They landed on the tarmac in front of them. ‘The truck,’ she said, indicating to her vehicle.

The gunman looked down at the keys in the road, his hands full of David and gun. ‘I’m gonna… you’re gonna have to get those,’ the gunman muttered to David.

‘Thanks, Jocelyn.’ Slowly, David crouched down to pick up the keys and got back up again, the gunman’s arm still around his neck.

‘No…’

‘Stay back!’ The gunman made David unlock the truck and slide across into the driver’s seat. ‘No tailing us – if I see police lights, I’ll shoot him.’

‘No!’

The gunman got in the passenger side, shut the door and levelled the gun at David again. Patrick watched, helpless and hating himself, as David, with a gun pointed at him, went to the trouble of putting on his seatbelt and mirror, signal, manoeuvring out. David shot him a sorry look as he pulled away, and Patrick was left with an empty store and the creeping terror that this could be the last time he would see the man he loved.

This could be the last time he would see the man he loved, _alive_.

‘This isn’t going to work.’

‘It’ll work.’

‘They’ll be following us.’

‘Oh, certainly, but they’re giving us space for now. Take your hoodie off.’

‘I’ll get cold.’

‘Oh my God, I am in an undershirt and one shoe, stop whining.’ David remembered that the other guy still had a gun and little to lose. ‘Nobody’s seen your face, your hoodie is the only distinctive thing about you.’ He paused. ‘Besides your mask, of course, which you should also probably take off.’

The other man did so. He was a sour looking little man, mid 40s, maybe? Ravaged by drugs. Just, really sad seeming.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the man. ‘About all of this. I didn’t mean to… I just needed cash. It all span out of control. Your poor fiancé.’

‘Yeah, that part sucked,’ sighed David. 

‘Safe to say, all of this sucked,’ added the man, apologetically.

They’d reached a point that was still good and secluded, but ten minutes’ brisk walk from a rural bus stop. David checked that nobody was in sight, no helicopters or anything, and pulled over.

‘By the way,’ he told the man, ‘my name’s David.’

‘Thank you for all of this, David,’ said the man. ‘I’d give you my name in return, but then I’d have to kill you.’

‘Yeah,’ said David, getting out, ‘we really haven’t experienced enough of a Stockholm Syndrome Bonding Moment for that kind of “banter” to be appropriate.’ He paused. ‘You know where you’re going?’ 

The man waved his phone at David. ‘Bus should arrive in 15 minutes.’

‘OK, then we don’t have long. You ready?’

The man winced, apologetically, clutching the gun.

‘You were gearing up to kill me an hour ago,’ David reminded him. ‘It’ll help both of us, trust me.’ He prepared himself. ‘Hard enough to look convincing, not so hard that I can’t drive like another 5K, straight away.’

‘I… have no idea how hard that would actually be,’ admitted the man. ‘It might take me a few goes?’

David rolled his eyes. ‘Of course. I mean, I’m already having the most _fantastic_ day, why not make this better?’

‘OK. You ready?’

‘No, but go ahead.’

‘Sorry David. For what it’s worth, you have a beautiful store, and your boyfriend obviously loves you a lot. So. Congratulations on getting married, and…’

‘Oh my God, just get on with it, please.’ 

The man swung the gun back, and David covered his eyes.

‘There it is.’ Roland pointed, past Patrick’s face. ‘My truck! It’s OK!’

The truck was stopped at a haphazard angle on the empty country road. A door had been left open.

‘Somebody’s still in there,’ the police officer told them as they drove closer.

Patrick fought the fear and looked at what was sticking out of the door. A man’s foot, in a sock with no shoe, tight black jeans…

‘That’s my son,’ cried Johnny, his voice tight. He, Stevie and Roland had screeched on to the scene in Stevie’s car mere seconds after David had been forced to drive the gunman away. They stank of blocked drains and Roland seemed more upset about the truck than David, but it was still a small comfort to at least have them with him.

The car pulled up and Patrick fumbled out of the car seat.

‘Sir, I’ll have to ask you to…’ began the officer, but Patrick was already sprinting to the truck’s open door.

‘David??’ He was going to cry again. He really didn’t care about that at this point. ‘No, no, no, no…’

Slumped over the seats, David groaned and clutched at his head, and relief washed over Patrick like a gentle wave, extinguishing his anxiety and leaving in its wake pools of cold, wet sorrow.

‘You’re OK. He’s OK!’

‘Thank fuck.’ Stevie joined him at the truck door, followed closely by Johnny.

‘David.’ Patrick gently took the hand that David was holding to his head. David blinked up at them, and no, actually, David was not OK. One side of his face was blooming with bruises. 

That _bastard_ had cold-cocked his fiancé.

‘She’s OK.’ Roland patted the roof of his truck, satisfied. ‘Dave pal, you’ve got to stop stealing my truck.’ He looked over at the police officer. ‘He’s always doing this, I think it’s an attention thing.’

‘He was taken hostage,’ retorted Johnny and the police officer in unison.

The officer crouched in front of David, inspecting the bruises. ‘Do you know what happened? Which way he might have gone?’

David shook his head, wincing at the fresh pain the action caused. ‘He was looking at something on his phone, he told me to pull over, got out… that’s the last I remember.’

The officer stood up and scanned the empty fields. A second police car pulled up.

‘Coulda gone anywhere,’ muttered the officer.

‘Well, yes,’ replied Johnny. ‘Maybe if you’d actually had a helicopter follow my poor son as I suggested, you’d be able to find this creep.’

‘Sir,’ sighed the officer, ‘as I said before, our one helicopter already being on a different assignment a hundred kilometres away isn’t my fault.’

‘There’s a town with a railway station nearby,’ a different officer noted. ‘Someone could make pretty good time if he cut through the fields.’

The other officer nodded. ‘Might be trying to escape by train, or take a different car.’

The police officers stepped away from the truck, organising a search of the town and the station as Roland made unhelpful interjections. Johnny’s phone started ringing. He took the call urgently.

‘Moira! Moira, they found him… well, if you’ll let me finish…’

‘Was he making you strip?’ Stevie asked David, troubled.

‘I offered him my sweater.’ David held his hand out to Patrick with a strange, puffy-faced pride. ‘Didn’t get these off me, though.’

‘I could have bought you more rings, David. You didn’t have to…’

‘I pled my case that they had sentimental worth to me, but I think it was more the fact that they were bespoke, and therefore it’d be very easy to find them and his trail if he tried to pawn them, that sold him on the idea of letting me keep them. I think by the point he shot the floor he felt it had gone wrong and he just needed an out. He didn’t take anything from the store, either.’ 

‘Well, that’s good news,’ Stevie said, pointedly, ‘isn’t it, Patrick?’

Ohh, he knew that tone. This was his fault. This was his fault, and Stevie knew it.

‘Is this my fault?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘This feels like it’s my fault.’

‘I don’t…’

‘Because of the last time. Because I was so frustrated at the situation last time that I… I took it out on you, and made out like you and Stevie should have called that first guy’s bluff or something, like I felt your safety wasn’t as important as stuff. Of course your safety’s more important than stuff. It’s just stuff, stuff can be replaced. You can’t.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘Is it?’ asked Stevie.

‘No, it isn’t. Because after the frustration subsided and I saw your side of the story a little more, I didn’t apologise. I just left it out there, the idea that you putting your safety before the inventory was disappointing to me. Because I can be really lousy at apologising. And because you… you always just… take it.’

‘Passing the blame back on to him again there, champ,’ muttered Stevie.

‘You _always_ just take it and internalise it,’ repeated Patrick, the guilt sitting hard on his chest, now, ‘and I always know that you will, and I push that, and I know that it’s awful to do so, even if it didn’t end up with horrible consequences down the line, like it did today.’

‘It’s OK,’ repeated David, awkwardly.

‘Not, it’s not. I know it’s not. And I need to stop waiting for you to tell me something I’m saying’s not OK, when I know better. I don’t mean teasing, I mean… crossing the line. So, I’m sorry. About the first stick up, about not telling my parents about us even after Rachel, about… God, the baseball game.’

‘I was magnificent at that baseball game, though.’

‘You were. You were, while I wasn’t, and I only acted nice to you after I'd gotten what I wanted out of the day, so I’m sorry, and I’m going to work harder on making myself be the one to realise I’ve crossed the line, and step back. OK?’

David nodded, and Patrick hugged him, as gently as he could.

‘You also owe me an apology for the first stick up,’ added Stevie, quietly.

‘Stevie, _you _didn’t get taken hostage or hit with a gun today,’ Patrick told her, ‘but for what it’s worth, I am really sorry about how I spoke to you after the first robbery.’

‘It’s OK,’ said David again.

‘David, would you stop telling me it’s OK? It’s not.’ Patrick pulled out of the hug, still holding David by his arms. Jesus, he was shivering – Patrick was cold even in a sweater and jacket. He pulled off his jacket in the hope of at least draping it over David’s shoulders. ‘I was so scared, how did you manage to keep it together?’

David shook his head, bewildered. ‘Think I channeled Alexis or something. It’s what I’d do when I got mugged in the old days. Like, instead of flight or flight? Because I can’t fight. Flight or Alexis.’

‘How are you still keeping it together _now_?’ asked Stevie.

OK, so that was the wrong question. Or maybe it was the right question, because it was going to have to happen sooner or later. David’s face crumpled. 

‘I don’t know,’ he wailed.

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Johnny, down the phone, ‘I think it just hit him, you were right, Alexis.’ He called out to David. ‘David, Alexis says did you remember her Hostage Situation Trick and Tips, and did you have any of your own, and do you think there’s maybe a brother sister hostage survival podcast in all of this? Personally, I think that’s a pretty good idea, maybe something to consider when you’re feeling a little less overwhelmed.’

They did do a podcast. It was called Brostages Before Hostages, but neither of them could decide on how to pronounce that in order to make it rhyme. It got very little traction and they dropped it after three episodes. 

The gunman was never caught. Nobody thought to check the passengers on the bus that stopped six kilometres from where the truck was found. There were fingerprints on the gun, the truck and in the store, but whoever the gunman was, he wasn’t in the police system. Likely, the police concluded, he was some drug addict who never usually did this sort of thing but had hit rock bottom, heard on the grapevine about a place that had successfully been hit before and decided to chance it. To David and Patrick’s knowledge, his prints were never picked up from any robberies afterwards. The floor was an easy fix, but Patrick made a priority of installing a panic button, first.

He learned to apologise more, and David learned to demand apologies when Patrick bristled a little too much and let the frustration spill over in David’s direction. As for not doing or saying so many things that demanded apology in the first place, well, life and love are learning curves, and everybody is a work in progress. Even somebody who, in the eyes of one other, is practically perfect in every way. He was trying his best. They both were.

David took up self defence classes but had to give up after a month because he pulled a muscle. Still, he learned a few pretty good moves during his four sessions.

He did steal Roland’s truck again but to his credit, that was his mother’s fault.

Nine months later, a card was delivered to the store.

‘What is it?’

‘Uh… wedding card,’ said David, reading it.

‘Who’s sending a wedding card to the store, two months after we got married?’

‘Oh… just some guy. Drug addict, from one of the darker periods of the fascinating tapestry that is my life.’

‘A drug addict you used to know is sending very late wedding cards straight to the store.’ Patrick nodded. ‘Should I alert the police?’

David shook his head. ‘I think he’s just letting me know he’s OK.’ He showed Patrick a poorly printed photo of a man’s hand, holding a sobriety chip. ‘Six months clean. Good for him.’

He put the card in a drawer, and kissed his husband.

‘You’re not going to put your nice new card up?’

‘God, no. Pastel teddy bears. Could you imagine?’


End file.
